THE SECOND PAGE OF INC NEWS

Thursday, September 25, 2014

The State Duma approved a bill to expedite a new set of Internet regulations that, experts say, would provide for the banning of such web services as Facebook, Booking.com and Amazon.

A law requiring all online companies to store users' personal data on Russian territory was passed last July and was set to enter into effect in September 2016.

Concerned about the need to "ensure faster and more effective protection of Russian citizens' rights to telecommunication privacy and personal data safety," lawmakers submitted a bill to slide the deadline forward by more than a year, according to the Duma's website.The bill to set the deadline to Jan. 1, 2015, passed in the crucial second reading on Wednesday.

Lobbying group the Information & Computer Technologies Industry Association said in an open letter on Monday that the rule would cripple Russia's IT industry. Russia simply lacks the technical facilities to host databases with users' personal data, and setting up the infrastructure within the remaining three months is impossible, the letter said.

"Most companies will be forced to put their operations on hold, inflicting untold damage on the Russian economy," the group said on its website.

But their appeal failed to sway lawmakers, who fast-tracked the bill — a procedure that, most political pundits say, implies endorsement from the Kremlin, which has not commented on the initiative.

The government intends to set up a roster of companies found to have violated the new law, a Duma representative was cited by Kommersant daily on Thursday as saying. He did not elaborate on penalties for lawbreakers, but Russia has been actively blacklisting websites since 2011.

Summer appears to have been a fruitful and creative period for Russian lawmakers. Less than two weeks into the State Duma's fall session, the legislative body is already buzzing with an array of quirky new legislative initiatives.

Light bulbs, white paint and a day off for President Vladimir Putin's birthday are just a few of the latest proposals. These the most important:

France is to increase security in public places and on public transport in the wake of the beheading of a French mountain guide in Algeria and threats against French citizens by jihadists.
The new measures were announced on Thursday after the president called an emergency meeting of the defence council.
Meanwhile France is continuing its bombing raids against ISIL targets in Iraq and has pledged to increase support for Syrian opposition fighters.
The French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said France refused to be intimidated by extremists: “France will never give in, France does not give into intimidation, that’s the reaction we owe our fellow citizen who was assassinated.”

A security flaw discovered in one of the most fundamental interfaces powering the internet has been described by researchers as ‘bigger than Heartbleed', the computer bug that affected nearly every computer user earlier this year.

The 'Bash bug', also known as Shellshock, is located in the command-line shell used in many Linux and Unix operating systems, leaving websites and devices power by these operating systems open to attack.

Like Heartbleed, Shellshock is a pervasive flaw that security researchers say will take years to fix properly. The responsibility to do so however rests with webmasters and systems administrators – rather than average users.

Security firm Rapid7 has rated the bug as 10 out of 10 for its severity, but "low" for complexity - with hackers able to exploit it using just three lines of code.

However, unlike Heartbleed, Shellshock will not require users to rush from site to site changing their passwords but it does give hackers another method of attack that they could potentially use to take over computers or mobile devices.

If Heartbleed's effect on users was akin to unlocking everyone's front door simultaneously, sending people scrambling back home to turn the key (ie change their passwords) then Shellshock is like giving thieves a new type of crowbar to break in to houses with - they're just as likely to use older methods, but it's still a blow for general security.

Security researchers are especially worried about its potential - but as yet unknown - effect on Apple Mac computers, which uses the Bash software which the bug exploits directly in the form of its command-line program Terminal.

Kazakhstan should take the threat posed by the radical group Islamic State more seriously, famous Kazakh political analyst and head of Risk Assessment Group Dosym Satpayev said in an interview to Megapolis newspaper.

According to the newspaper a video appeared in the social networks in mid-September purporting to show Kazakhstanis fighting on the side of the Islamic militants and saying they were ready to declare jihad on Kazakhstan.

Satpayev said that the danger of the "Islamic Caliphate" was very real. "It all started with threats to the Caucasus and Central Asia in general but now they have started calling the countries by name," he said.

“There is information that some of the so-called Mujahideen, having received necessary combat experience, are going back to their home countries. In particular, such reports came from the UK, France and Germany. And when the talk is about the possible risks to our country connected to participation of our citizens in the fighting on the side of the IS or Taliban, the emphasis is on the fact that their return to Kazakhstan may change the balance of power in the radical underground,” Satpayev said.

Satpayev said that the return of the citizens with experience in sabotage activities could lead to creation of new formations from various factions of radical Islamists and intensification of terrorist activities.

This view is shared by Yevgeny Satanovsky, President of the Middle East Institute, who believes that the catastrophe of Islamic Caliphate in Iraq may repeat itself in Afghanistan and then spread to Central Asia.

In an interview to Uznews.net the Russian expert said that he considered Kyrgyzstan and Turkmenistan the most vulnerable regions in Central Asia. Talking about the returning militants, Satanovskiy noted that such professionals were not only a mobile military force that could stir any region at the right time but were also ideal recruiters, especially of the youth.

Worrying is that Satpayev has not shown confidence in the ability of Kazakhstani security services to face such new challenges. "It is sufficent to recall the massacre in a national park near Almaty: even amateurish approach can cause a big stir in the power structures of Kazakhstan. It was then revealed that the radicals were outside the control of our special services," Satpayev said.

What does it mean to be Nigerian? That's the question on the lips of many in Africa's most populous country as new national identity cards are being rolled out. But this is an I.D. with a difference.

The card, which fits into a wallet and comes with a credit-card style chip, can also be used to make electronic payments. Nigerians can use it to deposit funds, receive social benefits, pay for goods and withdraw cash at ATMs across the country, according to MasterCard, which provides the card's prepaid payment technology. The company also claims that by providing proof of identity, the card solves one of the biggest problems people face when trying to open a bank account.

"To all Nigerians, I say, remember the National Identification Number, is your identity," Nigerian president Goodluck Jonathan said at the launch of the National Identity Smart Card, or NeID, at the end of August. "The card is not only a means of certifying your identity, but also a personal database repository and payment card, all in your pocket."

Pope Francis has sacked a Paraguayan bishop who has been accused of protecting a priest suspected of sexually abusing young parishioners. The Vatican said that "the Holy Father has decided to replace Monsignor Rogelio Livieres Plano" as bishop of Ciudad del Este. It is the second time in a week that Pope Francis has taken disciplinary action over clerical sex abuse scandals in Latin America. He has promised "zero tolerance".

Two days ago, the Pope ordered the arrest of a senior Vatican diplomat, Jozef Wesolowski, accused of the sexual abuse of children during a posting to the Dominican Republic. The Vatican statement only referred to the reasons behind the sacking of the Right Reverend Livieres Plano as a "painful decision taken for serious pastoral reasons".

It also said that the move followed a Vatican investigation of the bishop, the diocese and its seminaries. The BBC's David Willey in Rome says that the Rt Rv Livieres Plano has been at the centre of a local dispute over the promotion of an Argentine priest accused of inappropriate sexual behaviour.

Our correspondent says that Pope Francis has insisted there be no privileges for bishops when it comes to sex crimes against children. The Rt Rv Livieres Plano is a member of the conservative Opus Dei movement and is reported to have clashed with more progressive members of his diocese.

Church prosecutors have dealt with some 3,500 abuse cases worldwide during the past decade. Pope Francis has pledged a crackdown on clerics and employees of the Church who exploit minors, comparing their actions to a "satanic mass".

Nine men, including the radical Islamist preacher Anjem Choudary, have been arrested in London on suspicion of being members of a banned organisation. Officers are searching 18 premises in London and one in Stoke-on-Trent. The Met Police said it was part of an ongoing inquiry into Islamist-related terrorism and not in response to any immediate threat to the public. Mr Choudary is the former UK head of the Islamist group al-Muhajiroun or Islam4UK, banned in the UK in 2010. The arrested men, aged between 22 and 51, are being held at police stations in central London.

A "deadly serious" bug potentially affecting hundreds of millions of computers, servers and devices has been discovered. The flaw has been found in a software component known as Bash, which is a part of many Linux systems as well as Apple's Mac operating system. The bug, dubbed Shellshock, can be used to remotely take control of almost any system using Bash, researchers said. Experts said it was more serious than theHeartbleed bug discovered in April.

"Whereas something like Heartbleed was all about sniffing what was going on, this was about giving you direct access to the system," Prof Alan Woodward, a security researcher from the University of Surrey, told the BBC. "The door's wide open."

Some 500,000 machines worldwide were thought to have been vulnerable to Heartbleed. But early estimates, which experts said were conservative, suggest that Shellshock could hit at least 500 million machines. The problem is particularly serious given that many web servers are run using the Apache system, software which includes the Bash component.